What's the weakest Ember that cannot KO Kartana?

Question

The current joke is that Kartana faints to the weakest Ember. That got me thinking, is there an Ember that Kartana can survive?

Scenario 1
Assume both Pokémon are level 50. Kartana has a Jolly Nature. No Focus Sash.

Scenario 2
Feel free to adjust levels, stats and Natures as much as you want. No Focus Sash.

Comments

I find this hilarious (x4 effective, Kartana has terrible SpD, Ember is SpA)

Answer 1

That took a while.

Yes, there is. Or, are.

You know, Ember doesn't exist as a move in the Smogon Damage Calc, and Kartana is unreleased in others.

So I gave up. Almost. My curiosity won over and tried it methodically.

Bagon is the Pokemon that can learn Ember with the least Special Attack, and it doesn't even get STAB. And lo and behold, it causes only 53% damage.

Source

For good measure, I added the Pokemon with the next least Special Attack, Fletchinder, which gets STAB. At Joly nature, Kartana still survived w/ 8% health.

All Pokemon were Jolly in nature.

I realise you gave two scenarios, but I got only till playing out one. Hope you don't mind.

Comments

So basically if everything except for the Pokemon that uses ember is the same and the Pokemon using ember has a higher special attack stat than Fletchinder, Kartana Isn't gonna survive?

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Yup, basically. Not counting STAB boost, so another mon with a higher special attack, but not fire type might still not OHKO Kartana. *might*

but yeah, that about sums it up.

Answer 2

Fletchling is the weakest user of ember, doing about 80-96% in scenario one and 0.3% in scenario two. Lets get into the details.

The first scenario is somewhat unclear, but we'll assume kartana has a jolly nature, the opposing Pokemon a timid one, and run standard sweeping sets of 252 Spa/Atk, 252 Spe, and 4 SpD with no item on either. Bagon and fletchling tie for the weakest ember user, and you can argue fletchling is weaker because bagon gets the ability sheer force. We'll use fletchling for our purposes. In the end we end up doing 80.3 - 95.7%. In the event both Pokemon were meant to be jolly, we get 72.5 - 86.4%. That's scenario one, but what about scenario two?

The first thing I did was set the EVs to make kartana extremely specially defensive with an EV spread of 252 HP, 4 Atk, 252 SpD, and make fletchling 0 Spa, the damage being 27.3 - 32.2%. The natures are the next step, giving kartana a calm nature and fletchling a jolly one. We end up doing 27.3 - 32.2%. Then we simply remove the IVs from fletchling next, giving us 16.1 - 19.8%. I next added light screen and rain on the field, and gave kartana an assault vest, doing 2.4 - 3.1%. Now lets finally adjust the levels, making fletchling level 1 and kartana level 100. This makes ember do 0.3 - 0.6%. Now stat changes will be added, making fletchling -6 special attack, and kartana +6 Special defense. The damage amount is still the same, 0.3 - 0.6%. The final change we will make before concluding is giving kartana a water tera type, doing 0.3%, always.

Source: The showdown damage calculator

Disclaimer: in the original post, it mentions that for scenario two, you can adjust stats, which I assume means stat changes like what cosmic power gives you, not actual base stats otherwise it would be more like blissey than kartana. I also put in regular rain instead of heavy rain, so ember would do some damage, and assumed we were in a single battle, not a double battle, so no friend guard. I will also mention water sport, but that isn't in the damage calculator settings, and 0.3% percent ends up being 1 damage, so it doesn't really matter too much.

Comments

I swear this is my favorite question and answer. Here's an upvote.

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You forgot water sport.

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Water sport isn't in the calculater settings. I notice it is a thing though, but it always ends up doing one damage. I'll add that to the disclaimer section.